The McData Sphereon 4500 replaces the Sphereon 3216 in McData's midrange lineup. This new switch has the best price, with an intriguing pay-as-you-go plan; however, our tests showed that McData needs some improvement in both throughput and latency.
Unlike its two competitors, McData equips its 2-gigabit Fibre Channel switch with 24 fixed ports, rather than 16. However, the company sells the box for use in eight-port, 16-port, or 24-port configurations. A license key activates the unit in those eight-port increments. Such a port scheme provides good investment protection if you're installing a nascent SAN and are unsure of its growth potential.
The Sphereon 4500 has two hot-swappable power supplies/cooling assemblies. Unlike the SANbox 2, however, these units are removable from the rear, rather than the front, of the machine. An Ethernet management port resides on the unit's front, to the left of the Fibre Channel ports. The Sphereon 4500 is also one of two single-chip designs in our test. With its single 24-port chip, McData has designed the insides of this box cleanly.
The outside, however, is another story. The Sphereon 4500 is numbered right to left in a double row, with the zero port on the bottom right, rather than the more conventional left to right. McData tells us that the numbering is an engineering legacy; that's how all its past switches were numbered. We understand that, but nothing else with ports is numbered like that--and with good reason: It's a stupid idea, and needs to be changed on future switches.
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